“War with Iran Would Be Trump's Waterloo”

Reviewing my April 18, 2025 essay on why the US government’s “regime change” wars in the Middle East always fail to yield a constructive end for “We the People.”

A friend just sent me the following video recording of a 2008 interview with Donald Trump in which he declared that President Bush should have been impeached for leading the United States to war in Iraq under the false pretext that Saddam Hussein possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction that he intended to use against the American homeland. As President Bush famously put it on October 7, 2002:

Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

My friend who sent me the above video did so because he heard me recently marveling that President Trump had fallen into the same trap into which Bush fell in 2003—that it, he was persuaded that the “shock and awe” of US military power could quickly and successfully change a regime in the Middle East.

Watching the video reminded me of the following essay I posted on April 18, 2025 titled “War with Iran Would Be Trump’s Waterloo.” With no end to the war in sight, and diesel hitting a record average national high of $5.85 on September 4, I believe that President Trump is now facing significant risk of experiencing his own Waterloo moment.

Some readers will insist that the Iranian regime will ultimately be coerced to bow to the superior power of the US government, but the same arguments were made with respect to the regimes of North Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan.

The US government succeeded in getting rid of Saddam Hussein of Iraq, but at an enormous cost, and the current fractious government of Iraq has a strong Shia faction that is sympathetic to Iran.

Likewise, the US government succeeded in getting rid of Bashar al-Assad of Syria, but in one of history’s greatest ironies, replaced him with a former ranking Al-Qaeda operative who served five years in a US military prison in Iraq after he was caught in the act of planting a roadside bomb.

Please read the following essay that I originally posted on April 18, 2025 and let me know what you think in the comments about my analysis.

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For decades, U.S. foreign policy wonks such as Paul Wolfowitz, Raymond Tanter, Douglas Feith, and Richard Perle, argued that U.S. military power could reshape the Middle East, somehow transforming it from the tribal and religious mess that it is into an American-style liberal democracy.

The primary beneficiary of this miraculous transformation would—they claimed—be Israel. Both Tanter and Wolfowitz grew fond of the notion that “the road to Damascus leads through Baghdad,” meaning that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was the first step to getting rid of the Assad regime in Syria, thereby eliminating Israel’s troubles with its two of its most bloody minded rivals.

It’s been obvious to anyone with eyes to see that none of the Neocons’ childish scheming has worked. They finally succeeded in getting rid of Assad, but he has been replaced by former Al Qaeda gangsters.

The primary intellectual deficiency of the Neocon clique is that all of their mental energy is directed at getting rid of bad guys, with apparently zero thought given to who will replace them. This is especially evident in the case of Russia. If these schemers and their friends in the CIA succeed in getting rid of Vladimir Putin, who do they believe will replace him?

It was precisely this kind of scheming that led the British and the French to believe it would be a good thing to get rid of Ottoman rule in the Middle East. In 1916, the British and French essentially redrew the map of the entire region with their Sykes–Picot Agreement.

One could easily make the argument that all the bloody tribal and religious conflict in the region that has happened ever since probably wouldn’t have happened if the Ottomans had remained in charge.

Neocon policy wonks are—like millions of Americans—given to the comic book concept that humanity can be neatly divided into good guys and bad guys, and that improving humanity is always just a matter of getting rid of the bad guys. This overlooks this essential fact that is expressed (literally or metaphorically, take your pick) in the Book of Genesis—namely, that man is a fallen and fractured created who must constantly contend with his own depravity.

After making a mess of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, the same gang—suffering from incurable learning disabilities—wants to drag the Trump administration into war with Iran. This would be a total disaster for the American people and almost certainly for the Israeli people as well.

Here it is worth recalling that President Kennedy expressly warned Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and his successor, Levi Eshkol, that if Israel succeeded in developing a nuclear bomb, everyone else in the neighborhood would want one. They didn’t listen to President Kennedy, despite the fact that he was obviously right about this.

War with Iran would be President Trump's Waterloo. Iran is a huge country with mountainous terrain and a population of 80 million people. All the problems the U.S. military operation in Iraq encountered would be amplified manyfold.

Going to war with Iran would certainly result in an array of terrible consequences—many unforeseen— for the United States and the entire region, as well as for world trade. The Strait of Hormuz—with most of Middle East oil running through it—would be closed, as would the southern end of the Suez Canal.

The world economy and financial system is already in a precarious state, and the U.S. is already trapped in a debt sink, with annual interest payments now over a trillion dollars. The U.S. simply cannot afford war with Iran.

In other words, regarding Iran, President Trump should tell the obtuse Neocons to go jump in a lake. He should also be very wary of Benjamin Netanyahu doing something foolish to draw the U.S. into war with Iran.

Every great power in history was ultimately been sunk by foolish people who refused to accept the limits of their financial and military power. President Trump should stick with his instinct to negotiate with people instead of trying to get rid of them.